The supernatural is not exactly quantifiable. Or is it? Now through ethology, behavioral sciences, we know that any mind initially gives intelligent agency to stimuli of unknown origin - fear of the unknown - as a defensive mechanism. Through this grew the supernatural realm as a home for those superhuman beings that perform some incredible tasks, that no one actually witnessed, but due to an ignorance of natural properties is, of course, their only other means of an explanation. When they might have just admitted they didn't know.
Eventually, it became culturally acceptable to postulate supernatural (remember, they were originally only superhuman) beings as the responsible party for mis-fortunate happenstance. This lead to authority figures claiming expert knowledge, then privileged knowledge, eventually revelation as to the concerns of those supernaturally powerful beings (eg. spirits, gods, demons, etc). And while ignorance run-a-muck, authorized charlatans collaborated to institutionalize their "explanations" as far as their influence would allow. This led to the authoritative justification of regional superstitions (i.e. religions). These institutions quickly capitalized on the power of unfalsifiable, unquestionable, unapproachable authority figures that hail from an (until recently) unreachable sphere. This will, one day, be seen as the most advantageous, as well as covertly heinous, if not the only, property of the supernatural realm. This property will be used religiously by both religious and non-religious totalitarians, despots, dictators, sadomasochists, pedophiles, preachers and Sunday school teachers to convince people that some supernatural something-or-other gave them the authority to profess the intimate thoughts and wishes of this god or whatever. Making them, in effect, demigods.
Then these powerful charlatans persecuted people of discovery and inquiry, burnt libraries, (eg. The Library of Alexandria, early Pythagoreans, etc.) repressed education, limited the reading even possession of holy writings to the initiated (clergy), while at the same time, forbade reading of much else for more than a thousand years. In so doing, knowing full well that in absence of knowledge - superstitious explanations would reign supreme, pursued some of the most horrendous acts ever perpetrated against humans (mostly women), based on ridiculous supernatural claims of witchcraft, demons, devils, magic potions, daemonic possession etc. This fear and ignorance was even found to work as bigotry against groups of people mentioned in the holy books as culpable for the persecution of one of these supernatural demigods. These inquisitions had the effect intended with people turning against each other for fear of retribution by the supernatural, even when no one was around, or the church for the crimes of knowing too much about herbs or the human body, or being from a foreign land, having a speech impediment or any number of things. In this way ignorance was maintained, and the supernatural realm retains its power.
Then science broke through with Galileo, Bruno, Newton, Darwin et al., the reemergence of the ancient Greek philosophers and mathematicians via the Renaissance era. The Schism, Reformation, Enlightenment eras, the printing press, King James Bible, Thomas Paine's "Age of Reason," Thomas Jefferson's realization of dogmatic superstitious totalitarianism throughout man's history and the role ignorance played, James Madison's understanding of Baron de Montesquieu's "Spirit of Laws" and boom - freethinking is the light breaking through the fog of primitive beliefs. A beacon shinning into the foggy blackness, the nothing, that is the supernatural. We learn of our actual origins, thanks to Charles Darwin. Medical understanding explodes with the knowledge of these new found relationships. The anthropomorphic god of the biblical testaments becomes a parlor joke for all but those that pander to, and the unwashed masses, while charlatan sophists scramble to find new excuses for these god(s) of the gaps. And scientific advancements greatly enhance the human experience: drugs, planes, trains, satellites and computers. We look back at our history with new sight only to see that superstitions, the supernatural, and those supposed authority figures, both demigod and god were not only wrong, but in actuality, the problem.
Of course, there have been religious resurgences since the Enlightenment era. The single worst thing about democracy is that if populism isn't held in check by higher courts, mob mentality turns democracy into fascism. With Christian Supremacy morphing fascism into Nazism (read Mein Kompf), while nationalism will embolden something similar to Nazism into a "Third Reich". All of which was supported by the vast majority of Bishops and the Vatican of the Roman Catholic Church. In the United States, relatively far right organizations, politicians, religious groups and their adherents have partnered with powerful corporations to rewrite history (Texas SBOE recent ruling). These same far right groups are attempting to redefine political philosophies (read Liberal Fascism). Also they are continually reintroducing fallacious, fictitious evidentiarily unsupported claims as scientific, in an attempt to obfuscate the evidence for evolutionary theory with ID otherwise known as creationism. Science is expanding our knowledge of the properties and regularities of this natural realm, while our knowledge of the cosmos pushes the boundaries of the old real estate for these supernatural beings beyond known space and its temporal origins.
Then it's realized that in the history of human kind, never has any supernatural claim ever been justified, let alone verified, and poof! The evolution of the supernatural realm has come full circle only to be quantified for what it always has been - the figment of a primitive mind in search of an explanation for things that go bump in the dark.
An obvious expression of evidence for the claim of the supernatural origins would be that all isolated populations have supernatural entities in their history and culture, but due to the isolation, these entities have differing properties like names, likes, dislikes, powers, proclamations, responsibilities and modes of retribution, except ironically, when it comes to using naturally occurring cataclysms as one of its forms. Even what is considered morality varies widely between geographically isolated groups. My favorite example of course, is India, but the American Indians are on every level a study in migration, cultural interaction. Also, if one hypothetically travels backwards through time, they will find that the isolation increases with the limitations of travel between these geographically isolated groups. And it is noted by most Cultural Anthropologists that there is a link between language migration and an accompaniment of superstitious beliefs.
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